em how far you have come, nor how worthy your errand.
So I reflected, having nothing better to do, when my wagonful of
pilgrims had dropped out of sight in the fog--as a pebble drops into the
lake--leaving me with the house to myself; and presently, as I sat at
the window, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing outside. Here was
one, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet a
sweet and home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack,"--a mountain
bird, well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to forego
his music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in a
cloud often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness of
spirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a brief
vacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additional
risk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do their
worst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistling
philosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and I
thanked him for the timely word.

Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished, and I
made haste to clamber up the rocky peak--the Nose, so called--at the
base of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there stretched Lake
Champlain, visible for almost its entire length, and beyond it loomed
the Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. _I_ could sing now. It does a
man good to look afar off.

Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no small
gratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house were
full of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close colony, strictly confined to the
low trees at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours,
_yeep, yeep_, somewhat in the manner of young chickens; and after
supper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while they sang in full
chorus. At least six of them were in tune at once. _Wee-o, wee-o, tit-ti
wee-o_, something like this the music ran, with many variations; a most
ethereal sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quite
in tune also with my mood, for I had just come in from gazing long at
the sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundred
miles, and a stretch of the St. Lawrence showing far away in the north.
During the afternoon, too, I had been over the long crest of the
mountain to the northern peak, the highest point, belittled in local
phraseology as the Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, with